Edward Daniel Clarke

Edward Daniel Clarke, Fellow of Jesus College and Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge, was in Cyprus between 6 and 16 June 1801, having arrived in HM frigate Ceres. He landed at Salines Bay, Larnaca, and could not reach Paphos because of plague¹. He was born at Willingdon on 5 June 1769 and died in London on 9 March 1822³.

His account, in Travels in Various Countries (1812), records that the people of Larnaca rarely dug near the town without finding buildings, chambers or tombs. The English consul, "Signor Peristiani, a Venetian", had dug up "above thirty idols" of terracotta, limestone and marble, all sent to the ambassador at Constantinople, who presented them to Mr Cripps¹. Anna Marangou calls this the first explicit record of antiquities leaving Cyprus⁴. Clarke also examined two of the inscribed marbles that Sir Sidney Smith had removed from Paphos¹.

Clarke bought engraved gems, finding them cheaper from the goldsmiths of Nicosia than at Larnaca, and left some ring-stones behind at Larnaca¹. The English consul gave him the hand of a colossal marble statue from Paphos and, before he sailed, obtained a small silver coin of Kition for him¹. According to Ulbrich and Kiely, he also received coins from Antonio Vondiziano, whom they name as consul, among them a Salamis issue of the late 6th or 5th century BC that Clarke, they say, rightly called pre-Macedonian; their present whereabouts are unknown⁵. Claude Delaval Cobham reprinted Clarke's Cyprus pages in Excerpta Cypria in 1908¹.